Abstract

Affective empathy has been variously characterized. First, I argue that we have reasons to prefer a narrower account of affective empathy, which requires the cognitive mechanisms of perspective-taking. Second, I mount a challenge to the standard account of affective matching thought to be required for affective empathy. On one widely held view, affective empathy requires an actual affective match between the subject and the target of empathy. I reject this view. While empathy often involves an actual match, we also count as empathizing with the target if we share the fitting state in their situation. This wider account better captures a number of plausible cases of empathy, and it also better explains why we care about affective empathy.